Category Archives: Scarborough Shoal

ONE WAY to frame the Philippine claim in regard to areas in the South China Sea is from the right to self-determination for its own people as to the use of natural resources that are rightfully theirs. As held in the East Timor case, such right is peremptory and invokes erga omnes omnium (universal) obligations. This is from the point of view of state responsibility reinforcing erga omnes partes (treaty) obligations.

Thus, under the law on state responsibility, states not party to the dispute in question have an obligation to respect the territorial integrity and sovereign rights of the Philippines; they are legally bound to refuse to recognize the Chinese Nine-Dash Line as lawful, and to refrain from recognizing or entering into any agreements with China for the unlawful exploitation of natural resources in the Philippine EEZ and the Continental Shelf.

There is also the positive duty on the part of all states to cooperate to put a stop to such unlawful acts. Even non-parties to the UNCLOS are bound by such an obligation, it being (jus cogens) peremptory in nature.

The Philippines’ entitlement to the fruits of such a right has already been confirmed and upheld by the landmark judgment of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the South China Sea Arbitrationcase.

Lawyer Joel Butuyan, in his Philippine Daily Inquirercolumn and Justice Antonio Carpio in his public statements have already pointed to the possibility of suing third parties conniving with China in exploiting resources within Philippine EEZ and the Continental shelf within the UNCLOS regime.

The law on state responsibility solidifies the Philippine claim against such a situation through the legal effects of the right to self-determination. This is general international law complementary to the Law of the Sea regime.

And so the Philippines has just had its Nicaraguan moment as it clinched a unanimous decision in most of its 15 arbitral claims against Chinese “Nine-Dash Line” expansionism in the South China Sea.

The Permanent Court of Arbitration, in a landmark ruling released July 12 on the case In the Matter of the South China Sea Arbitration (it’s formal name, also referred to here as the Philippine Case), invalidated China’s claims over pretty much of the maritime areas in the region.

The Arbitral Court also clarified in favor of the Philippines the status of many features in the contested Spratly islands and Scarborough Shoal with both scientific and legal criteria, in relation to a resource-rich Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and Continental Shelf.

The win recalls an earlier and similar David versus Goliath seminal ruling by an international tribunal, the case filed by Nicaragua against the United States in 1984, which was decided by the International Court of Justice in 1986. Here, the United States was sued by Nicaragua before the World Court over the former’s promotion of Low Intensity Conflict and direct military action in its territory through the mining of its harbors. The ICJ ruled in Nicaragua’s favor against its giant legal opponent.

Key wins for the Philippines

For the most part, the PCA’s definitive clarifications agreed with the Philippine position; but where it did not, the country still came away the winner. Thus, the following important takeaways from the Arbitral Award:

Historic rights to living and non-living resources in the South China Sea are incompatible with the maritime entitlements provided in the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, insofar as these fall within the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of other States in the region. What is doubly significant is that the Arbitral Tribunal also found evidence that consistent with the language of the UNCLOS itself, the Chinese understanding and practice of historic rights as to the Nine-Dash Line does not pertain to historic title to land or maritime areas, which would amount to a claim of full sovereignty, but only to “historic rights short of title.” As the UNCLOS superseded any historic rights, or other sovereign rights or jurisdiction, in excess of the limits it imposes, the Nine-Dash Line claim cannot survive the treaty’s maritime regimes. In this way, the Arbitral Court also made short shrift of Chinese arguments that the issues brought before it by the Philippines were among those it had made reservations about as far as the application of the Annex VII compulsory dispute settlement mechanism of the UNCLOS is concerned. It bears stressing also that the Arbitral Court deals only with the application and interpretation of the provisions of the UNCLOS and is not competent to adjudicate issues of ownership of disputed islands.

Mischief Reef (Panganiban Reef) and Second Thomas Shoal (our Ayungin Shoal where we have grounded the BRP Sierra Madre as our forlorn if rutted outpost) –these being low-tide elevations as we had argued– are part of the Philippines’ Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf. China cannot prevent the Philippines from exercising its sovereign rights over waters and features found within its EEZ.

Mischief Reef being part of the Philippines’ EEZ and Continental Shelf, China has no business reclaiming it and building artificial islands over it. Moreover, no amount of construction by China can transform low-tide elevations or rocks into full-blown natural islands able to generate all the maritime entitlements under UNCLOS.

The other features in the Spratlys, namely Fiery Cross Reef, Johnson Reef, McKeenan Reef, and Gaven Reef (North) were held to be rocks unable to independently sustain human habitation or economic life and entitled only to a 12-nautical mile territorial sea. Meanwhile, Hughes Reef, Gaven Reef (South) and Subi Reef were held to be low-tide elevations not capable of appropriation by China. Thus, both sets of reefs do not and cannot generate any EEZ for China.

Scarborough (Panatag) Shoal is no more than a group of rocks jutting out of the water at high tide, able only to generate a 12-nautical mile territorial sea. However, the Arbitral Court said that the area is subject to traditional or artisanal fishing rights for fishermen from the Philippines, China (and Taiwan) and Vietnam. This is without prejudice to some future determination of who owns the Shoal, a question not within the competence of the Arbitral Court to decide. China violated these traditional fishing rights when it barred Filipino fishermen from the Shoal.

In a bit of a surprise (may be not, given the scientific side to it), the Arbitral Court ruled that none of the high-tide features in the Spratlys –including our Pag-asa (Thitu) island in the Kalayaan island group — can sustain human habituation or economic life on their own in their natural condition. The Taiwan-occupied Itu Aba itself, at one point considered a “game changer” in the proceedings and a contentious issue between Associate Justice Francis Jardeleza and Associate Justice Antonio Carpio – two members of the Philippine legal team – is technically a rock. Thus, none of the islands can generate anything beyond a 12-nautical mile territorial sea.

Following this, none of the features that mattered for the Philippines, whether low-tide elevations or high-tide formations, can generate maritime entitlements in favor of China or that would immediately require a delimitation of boundaries, which situation would be beyond the Arbitral Court’s jurisdiction.

The Court rejected the Chinese position that the Spratlys is one archipelago generating as a whole its own territorial sea, contiguous zone, continental shelf and EEZ. This may prove to be an important factor if and when the question of who owns which island in the island chain is actually submitted to another international arbitration proceeding, this time, under principles of general international law. It bears noting that in its 2009 Baselines Law – seen by critics as the country’s waiver of its historic claims to title under the 1898 Treaty of Paris – the Philippines also treated the islands in the Spratlys under its control as belonging to a regime of islands under Art. 121 of the UNCLOS.

The Arbitral Court held that Chinese incursions in the Reed Bank area (Recto Bank for the Philippines, where oil exploration rights had been granted by the Philippine government) violate the Philippines’ sovereign rights over its Continental Shelf.

Under the UNCLOS and relevant treaties, there is an obligation on the part of states to protect the marine environment from degradation as well as to ensure safe marine navigation. The PCA found that the Chinese government tolerated and protected Chinese fishing vessels engaging in harmful harvesting activities of endangered species at Scarborough Shoal, Second Thomas Shoal and other features in the Spratly Islands. At various times, China was found to have also engaged in unsafe marine navigation vis-à-vis Philippine ships, thus violating relevant treaties to which it was a party stipulating best navigational practices. It also held that China has engaged in irreversibly destructive island-building activities at Cuarteron Reef, Fiery Cross Reef, Gaven Reef (North), Johnson Reef, Hughes Reef, Subi Reef and Mischief Reef. These acts and omissions violated China’s obligations under UNCLOS to protect the marine environment.

The Philippines’ Nicaraguan Moment

What the Nicaragua case (Military and Paramilitary Activities in and against Nicaragua (Nicaragua v. United States of America) had done for the international law on the use of force and the threat of force, the Philippine Case has just did for the Law of the Sea in many key areas. It established definitive rules on such areas as the legal status of historic rights in relation to the maritime entitlements under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, artificial and natural islands, low-tide elevations, responsibility for environmental damage, safety in marine navigation, and traditional fishing grounds as against the EEZ.

The Arbitral Award is yet the most comprehensive in scope since the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea began hearing procedures under a compulsory dispute settlement mechanism of ANNEX VII of the treaty, which took effect in 1994.
The five-member arbitral tribunal was convened in 2013, comprised of some of the world’s leading subject-matter authorities. Presided over by Judge Thomas A. Mensah of Ghana, a former President of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in Hamburg, Germany, it included three of the sitting judges on that court, namely Judge Jean-Pierre Cot (France), Judge Rüdiger Wolfrum (Germany) and Judge Stanislaw Pawlak (Poland), and Professor Alfred H. A. Soons, the former director of the Netherlands Institute for the Law of the Sea.

Uncanny parallels and ironies

The uncanny parallels and ironies in the two leading cases are a-plenty, although they concern by and large different areas of international law.

Not to be missed is the fact that Foley Hoag, the Philippines’ lead counsel in the South China Sea Arbitration is the same American law firm that won for Nicaragua respect in the world stage in its legal battle against the United States at the height of the Cold War. Both cases involved a behemoth in world politics – the United States in the 1986 case, China in the 2016 case.

The first case was filed over American intervention in a country that had turned communist and had repudiated ties with a former patron; the second case involved a communist state’s Post-Cold War ambitious and creeping occupation of a wide expanse of maritime territories encompassing some of the world’s busiest sea lanes.

In the Nicaragua Case, although the United States participated in the Jurisdictional Phase, it disengaged from the proceeding as it went to the Merits. In the South China Sea Arbitration, China formally stayed away from the proceedings from Day One, calling it illegal (but informally put forward its position to the Arbitral Court, including writing individually its members as well as publicizing a position paper it had commissioned to rebut the Philippine case).

In both cases, the Courts ruled on the most important questions that it had jurisdiction to hear the controversy brought before it, and decided in favor of the party that filed the suit. The United States in the first case and China in the second case would refuse to recognize the court judgment.

Yet in the Philippine Case, the United States vigorously supported its long-time ally and former colony in its campaign to invalidate China’s expansive Nine Dash-Line claims. This, even if it is not a party to the UNCLOS.

The Nicaragua Case would go on to be an important precedent for many other international law cases, reshaping fundamental ways in which the international community now understands the use of force and the threat of force as a means of settling international disputes under the UN Charter. Some scholars also credit the ICJ’s ruling in the de-escalation of many insurgency-related conflicts in the Latin American region.

In the South China Sea dispute, the US had called on China to follow a rules-based regime in settling the maritime conflict, when three decades earlier, it was not willing to abide by the binding nature of the ICJ’s judgment in the Nicaragua Case.

In fact, in the Philippine Case, the Permanent Court of Arbitration itself would cite the Nicaragua Case favorably in establishing why it had jurisdiction to hear the case, yes, even despite the non-participation in the proceedings of interested parties other than China.

On that question as well as on where and when a party is defaulting, the Arbitral Award is a masterful study of why international law cannot be allowed to be held hostage by the refusal of a state – a superpower at that in this case – to participate in a proceeding that concerns communal interests.

The independence of international tribunals is immensely important in the legitimacy of their rulings. The South China Sea Arbitration, as does the Nicaragua Case, shows that international law – contrary to what the Marxist theorists have put forward in the past, can be divorced from the politics of naked power.

It is likely that scholars and international tribunals would mine the Arbitral Award’s nearly 500-page carefully argued ruling on the Merits as a bible of sorts on the UNCLOS for many years to come.

The way forward?

The ICJ’s first female judge, Prof. Rosalyn Higgins, defines international law as a “normative process of authoritative decision-making.” By this definition, the Arbitral Award is already a big step towards legal stability in the South China Sea, removing once and for all the ambiguities that had attended the Chinese Nine-Dash Line claim since it was first advanced in the late 1940s.

By its very nature, the UNCLOS itself was designed to define in clear terms what maritime entitlements accrue to a coastal state, and the PCA, in the South China Sea Arbitration, has just made clear Chinese maritime claims cannot exceed what is available to it under the multilateral treaty.

As former University of the Philippines professor Harry Roque, now a legislator, argued, “the Court’s decision in this arbitral case will be its own enforcement mechanism.”

Roque, who taught international law for many years, said that a declaration by an impartial tribunal of the illegality of an act of a state in this case “has inescapable profound implications on what kind of values the international community wants to govern the way relations between and among states are conducted.”

Vociferous Chinese opposition to the Arbitral Award has evoked in Chinese constituencies memories of egregious past historical humiliations during colonial times. It has even kicked up the specter of a proxy war in which the real power behind the arbitration is the United States – the same country that refused the ICJ’s ruling in the Nicaragua Case thirty years ago. (The fact that the American law firm that gave a resounding defeat to the US in the Nicaragua Case is the same law firm that litigated the South China Sea Arbitration on behalf of the Philippines somehow blunts the charge).

Yet, on many levels, the Philippines in the South China Sea Arbitration may be better situated than Nicaragua was when it won the ICJ ruling in 1986.

For one, many countries other than the United States have, from the beginning, supported the Philippine cause, including those considered as “specially affected states” in international law.

Too, major European powers that supported the American veto against the ICJ’s Nicaragua Case ruling have expressed support for the Philippine arbitral case against China (as in the case of France and the United Kingdom). Indeed, many big players in the European Union have urged China to act according to international rules.

To a big extent, this is because other than territorial or maritime concerns, the South China Sea region straddles an area with enormous economic potential that goes beyond its actual geophysical reaches; it practically implicates the global economic order, as a third of the world’s shipping pass through the region.

There is also the fact that the Arbitral Award has far-reaching consequences – a “domino effect” – even if refused acceptance by China; this is because it without doubt also benefits other claimant states – again, members of the ASEAN – who reject Chinese claims that encroach on the maritime regimes they also claim for their own under the UNCLOS. The Arbitral body’s decisive demolition of the Nine-Dash Line claim has that effect.

Moreover, with a judgment embodying definitive rulings on what before were unclear problem areas as far as the features found in the South China Sea is concerned, the Arbitral Award presents a logical and legal basis for a proposed Code of Conduct among claimant countries belonging to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Perhaps, at no other time than this has it become opportune for the ASEAN to deal collectively with the elephant in the room that is China. While it is true that China is a major trading partner for many of them, the regional body cannot ignore any instability in the region sparked by the increasingly intransigent Chinese coming at a time when the association is moving towards greater economic integration.

And at least with respect to the Scarborough Shoal, there is room for compromise, or the development of a common code for traditional fishing, as pointed to by the PCA in its Arbitral Award. This may also present a door of opportunity to engage non-state actors – civil society groups from all sides of the dispute – who had been sidelined by the realist politics that had taken over the public discourse over the South China Sea maritime conflict. Far too often, state-to-state confrontations leave out the very people who are the first to be affected by such conflict.

Paradoxically, it also gives the Philippines greater constitutional flexibility. The 1987 Constitution expressly allocates the resources in the country’s EEZ for the exclusive use of its citizens. It is however silent where resources in traditional fishing grounds are concerned.

In any case, its 2009 Baselines Law had carved out a regime of islands out of Scarborough Shoal; it is a designation that does not necessarily conflict with the Arbitral Award stating that the Shoal is but an outcrop of rocks, or an island complex unable to sustain human life or economic activity, not to mention that the Philippine Supreme Court had also already rejected a constitutional challenge to the new Baselines Law.

Thus, President Rodrigo Roa Duterte may very well be correct in his basic stance of renewed diplomatic ties with China –but only if he negotiates from the unprecedented position of moral and legal strength the PCA’s Arbitral Award has just given to us.

* Mr. Bagares has a law degree from the University of the Philippines and serves as Executive Director of the Manila-based Center for International Law, an NGO dedicated to the promotion of the Rule of Law in the ASEAN region through binding international legal norms. He also teaches public international law at the Lyceum Philippines University College of Law.

This essay first appeared in a slightly different form at Verafiles.org.

While the Chinese Communist Party wrestled with the challenges of political transition at home (including sex scandals, corruption and murder in the highest echelons of power), the Chinese government has been picking quarrels with its much smaller neighbours over maritime territory.

Tensions over territorial disputes across the Asian region have led observers to wonder whether a China with immense economic needs and superpower ambitions is actually able to follow rules-based maritime regime under the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) vital to regional cooperation and stability.

Law of the Sea in the disputes

The UNCLOS establishes the reach of a coastal state’s 12- nautical mile territorial sea, 24-nautical mile contiguous zone, 200-nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone, 200-nautical mile Continental Shelf and its 150-nautical mile extension. It also provides rules for the exploitation of mineral and marine resources found in the sea and the seabed as well as for resolving conflicting maritime claims.

With Japan, China appears to have recently come dangerously close to a shooting war in a dispute over the five small uninhabited islands and three rocks of the Senkaku in the East China Sea.

Indeed, China, which treats Taiwan as an estranged province, denies the Japanese charge.

Meanwhile, in the South China Sea, an area rich in oil, gas and fishing resources, China is locked in a long-standing dispute with several Southeast Asian nations over the Spratly group of islands, namely, Malaysia, Vietnam, Taiwan, the Philippines, Brunei and Indonesia.

China, a signatory to the UNCLOS, justifies its territorial and maritime claims in the region through its Nine-Dash Line declaration.

Click here for the full essay as it appeared in the University of Exeter’s ThinkIR Blog.

A little more than a week ago, local and international news agencies were abuzz with reports about US Defense Secretary Leo Panetta’s announcement of a new “pivot” policy – a shift in American defense posture – one that would mean the redeployment of 60 percent of naval assets to the Asia-Pacific region by the year 2020.

Then as if on cue, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, flew to Manila a few days after Panetta’s announcement for talks with his Philippine military counterparts.

At a press briefing in Manila, Dempsey said the shift would feature “three “‘mores” in US naval operations in the region —more attention, more engagement and more quality.

Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto Del Rosario, reacting to Dempsey’s pronouncements, happily affirmed that the new American defense policy environment would mean Filipinos are to expect more port calls in the Philippines of American navy ships.

As Mr. Panetta was winding up his Asian trip, President Benigno Aquino III met with President Obama at the White House and the two leaders would subsequently announce greater cooperation in various areas, notably in common security concerns in the West Philippine Sea.

In addition, Obama promised increased military assistance to help the Philippines build a “credible minimum defense,” including a US$ 30 million grant this year – which is nearly double what it gave its former colony since the latter terminated the presence of US bases at Clark and Subic in 1991 – and a second decommissioned coastguard cutter for the Philippine Navy.

Despite loud denials from the Americans, the “pivot” is seen as an answer to the growing ambitions of China in the region, which threatens US access to international sea lanes crucial to its long-term economic and military interests.

Unprecedented tension between China and the Philippines over Scarborough Shoal in May this year seemed to have provided a perfect excuse for the US to reassert its presence in the region.

Indeed, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, testifying before the US Congress, warned against a China increasingly asserting its dominance in the South China Sea with no qualms about violating the maritime jurisdictions of its neighbors in its quest for minerals and other raw materials its expanded economy needs.

No doubt, the Philippines occupies a strategic place in this major shift in US global defense posture. Already, the country has proven to be an indispensable element in its global war against terror, with many parts of its archipelago providing excellent training grounds for its newly-organized highly mobile, quick deployment units under a controversial Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA).

Since May, a slew of US navy ships have called port in the Philippines, and following President Aquino’s US trip, more are expected to arrive, along with more US troops who will be fielded to the country on a rotation basis, purportedly for training and joint exercises with their Filipino counterparts.

We’ve been dubbed, since the Bush years, as a “major non-NATO ally” and three years ago –in the words of President Obama – as the “coordinator” for the US in the ASEAN region.

But do the Americans match their sweet words to the Philippines with equal deeds to help us develop “credible minimum defense”?

At first glance, it does seem like it: the Philippines is supposedly now the largest benefactor of the Pentagon’s Foreign Military Financing budget, receiving $11 million in 2005, $12 million in 2006, $13 million in 2007 and $30 million this year.

However, we’re not even on the list of the top ten beneficiaries of US defense assistance three years after 9/11, according to data from the US Center for Public Integrity: (figures have been rounded-off): Israel (US$9 billion), Egypt (US$6 billion), Pakistan (US$4.6 billion), Jordan (US$2.6 billion), Afghanistan (US$2.6 billion), Colombia (US$2 billion), Turkey (US$1.3 billion), Peru (US$446 million), Bolivia (US$320.6 million) and Poland (US$ 313 million).

The Asian country nearest to us who is on the list is Pakistan. Compared to what Pakistan is getting from the US, our share of foreign military financing is peanuts.

Over the last few years, the US has given more than $ 7 billion to Pakistan in direct assistance – that is, in funds to purchase weapons, supplies and equipment, purportedly to help it fight the Taliban. With all that money, it is a wonder how Osama Bin Laden was able to elude Pakistani intelligence, as he was able to live a comfortable existence in a walled off mansion in Abbottabad for many years right under their noses.

Compare that to American military aid to the Philippines, which comes in the form of financing; that is, no money actually reaches Philippine coffers. Funds are directly paid to American firms contracted by the US government to supply mostly refurbished equipment to the Philippine military, like Vietnam-war era helicopters, trucks and patrol boats. Recently, the US has agreed to hand down to us two decommissioned Coastguard cutter but stripped of most of its armaments. The first delivery, which the Philippine Navy renamed BRP Gregorio Del Pilar, was the same vessel that chanced upon Chinese fishing vessels poaching mostly endangered marine species at Panatag Shoal.

Philippine Navy top brass, on the eve of President Aquino’s US visit, pleaded with US authorities to deliver to us the second Coastguard cutter without removing its armaments. But the plea from a major non-NATO ally and coordinator for the ASEAN fell on their deaf ears, even if it only concerns two 40-year old ships that have already seen better days.

So, what credible minimum defense capability for the Philippines is the United States talking about? We’ve gotten a raw deal before and we’re getting more of the same treatment from the Americans, who obviously want to keep us in relationship of dependency so that we will always be at their beck and call.

It is no wonder that despite years of American military aid to the Philippines, our armed forces remains the most poorly-equipped in the Asian region. Barya-barya lang at mga pinaglumaan na ang bigay nila sa atin. After all these years, we’re still being treated by the US as its toady and not as its equal.

On the same week Mr. Panetta announced a “pivot” in US defense policy, CNN broke the news that the US government
has decided to cut aid to a Pakistani version of “Sesame Street” because of charges of corruption. The price tag: US$ 20 million.

The Americans like us very much because they get so much from us for so little in return.

Prof. Harry L. Roque Jr., has been invited to give two lectures on the Scarborough Shoal controversy in Washington D.C.

The first, on June 12, 2012 at 1:30 pm, is sponsored by by the Council on Foreign Relations while the second, on June 14, 2012, at 3 pm, is under the auspices of the Heritage Foundation. Both lectures are open to the public.

For a preview of what he has to say in these lectures, check out here his latest opinion piece on the controversy, entitled Chinese Shadow Play.

Meanwhile a report on a recent lecture he delivered last week under the auspices of the Ortigas Foundation may be found here.

Prof. Harry Roque and I were recently interviewed by Caixin Media, a path-breaking, Beijing-based bi-lingual publication, on the Scarborough Schoal Dispute between the Philippines and China. We didn’t know how the interviews would be presented. It turns out the magazine also got on board two Chinese discussants, who were separately interviewed.

They were Zhang Jianjing, managing editor of China Reform, Caixin’s monthly magazine featuring extensive commentary and analysis on political and economic issues and Huang Shan, chief of Caixin’s international desk.

First, a note on Caixin Media:

Caixin Media is recognized for fearless investigative journalism as well as comprehensive coverage of business and finance in China. It was hailed internationally as “one of China’s more outspoken media organizations.” At the end of last year, Caixin was awarded the 2011 Shorenstein Journalism Award by Stanford University, the first Asian winner in the award’s history. Caixin editor-in-chief Hu Shuli was named one of Time Magazine’s Top 100 Influential People in 2011, while managing editor Wang Shuo was named as one of the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders earlier this year.

It’s editor-in-chief, Hu Shuli, was profiled in the New Yorker in 2008.

Here’s the link to the running discussion, as presented by the magazine.